Month: July 2023

–Who is Christopher Prud’homme?

I am a 24 years old film director and movie lover from Montreal who aims to explore genre films with a subtle and poetic approach.

In 2020, after more than 4 years in the world of special effects, I decided to quit my young career in order to pursue my real passion for directing. I buried this dream of mine behind my introverted self for years, knowing right from the beginning that I needed to express myself way more than I could do in the conformist VFX world.

I then followed, still in 2020, a formation on the technical aspects of cinema before directing my first short PIG IN A CAGE to test the waters, to see if I was really doing the right move. I realized at this exact moment what I wanted to do. After this short, I got admitted in a university film production program, which I quickly left to focus on my upcoming contracts and own films.

Fast-forward to 2022, I crafted VIDI, my second short and this is the film that gave me the opportunity to do this interview.

–What inspired you to become a filmmaker?

As far as I can remember, cinema has been part of my daily life. As a kid, I remember the movie collection at home, the video-club on Friday nights & the many evening out to the theatre. This is the cliché answer, but it’s true. As I grew older, all these elements became more and more important to me. The movies that I found interesting became increasingly sophisticated, the video-club nights out were not only on Fridays anymore, and the nearest movie theatre became literally my home on the weekends. This passion never stopped to grow, and today I can’t imagine myself without art, without cinema.

–Do you think the cinema can bring a change in the society?

Absolutely!

Cinema shaped my own perception of the world, so I have absolutely no doubt about the power of this art form. Movies give us a chance to reflect on relatable subject such as our own lives and the lives of others, while also having the incredible capacity to let us explore new worlds and to step out of our reality momentarily. That last argument resonates strongly with me since movies have always been a refuge for me in my dark times and have allowed me to find a strong passion which today becomes my job. With cinema having as many layers at the same time combined with the fact that literally everyone watches movies, its power to change society it is an evidence to me!

–What would you change in the world?

If we let alone our rich occidental problems out of the equation for once, I’d say I’d like to change major things that seem to be increasingly out of the media these days. At the time of this interview, all we hear about is that billionaire submarine trip to the Titanic that turned out deadly. I’d say that people dying of having no access to drinkable water or literal genocides in multiple countries are far more concerning than this billionaire ego-trip or the fact that Elon Musk bought Twitter. My major change would be to switch people conceptions of what’s important in life, it’s not normal that people are focusing more on sending death threats to drag queens all over the world than what’s in their kids plates.

In other words, my change would be for people to focus on the right issues and to put into perspective their problems.

–Where do you see the film industry going in the next 100 years?

I think that the war between art house cinema and big studios will still be very present in 100 years. I think that artistic cinema will remain important in our industry since, obviously, the big studios will look dumber and dumber with their idiotic scenarios and artificial intelligence to replace the real talents. Which scares me because people seem to be very fond of the idea of going to the theatre to see the same story on repeat, all generated by robots made to collect their money.

–Who is Debra Knox?

Born from a first generation American Sicilian mother and an American Revolutionary Irish southern good old boy my parents fought to rise above their poverty and lack of education to give my siblings and I the American Dream.  As a child the birth of rock and roll and MGM musicals fueled my every waking moment and by my teenage years I was a musician, writer and front person for a band.  Songwriting has led to script writing and making films using my music, wildly vivid imagination and tumultuous childhood as a catharsis for creative expression. Luckily I had an Italian mother and large family full of love and music to counter my father’s drinking and hot temper.  Though scared, I survived, recovered and am striving to be a conscious individual making films in spite of ageism, sexism, money and any and all other internal obstacles.

-What inspired you to become a filmmaker?

Directing and acting in theater for over 30 years, putting on a show and creating something out of nothing isn’t new to me.  What’s new is having the technology not only affordable but accessible and comprehensible.  If I would’ve had a Mac and an IPHONE when I was a teen I’d 10 times famous by now.

 

–Do you think the cinema can bring a change in the society?

That’s what it’s all about. The human experience encapsulated in an hour and a half premise allowing the individual to feel and process universal emotions manipulated by color, sound, music and premise through the eye of the director. The art of cinema.

-What would you change in the world?

To put money in the hands of the artist rather then in the fist of the business executives who only see monetary gain as the final solution.  

-Where do you see the film industry going in the next 100 years?

Maybe going to greater heights, maybe to the lowest depths of what social media has to offer.  Perhaps there’s too much accessibility to filming everyone’s waking moment from birth to death.  If by chance there’ s a future in a 100 years the attention span of the average person may only be 10 seconds long, or there’ll be a revolt against stupidity and an endless cinematic film full of love and delight, despair and sorrow will be made by true hearts sharing a kindred spirit for truth. Only the shadow knows. 

-Who is Stephen MichaNo Masel Kelly?

An artist first and foremost. Actor/writer/director/entrepreneur and soon to be book author. Determined and fearless. Passion is what drives me.

-What inspired you to become a filmmaker?

I wanted to express myself and since being a writer I was able to write 2 short films to do just that.

-Do you think the cinema can bring a change in the society?

Yes. I think it is important to show our differences but also show we are all people who want acknowledgement, understanding, compassion and love.

-What would you change in the world?

Hunger and racism.

Where do you see the film industry going in the next 100 years?

With the advent of social media platforms it is much easier to get content out to an audience. I’m not sure of the old school ways of going to a theater will be the way it was decade ago. Maybe that does come back a bit, but change is inevitable. It is so much easier to reach the world now.

-Who is Damiano Rossi?

How can someone define himself? It would be a useless exercise or the result of an inordinate ego. Of course, if someone carries out an artistic activity in any form, we are certainly talking about a person who needs attention. There is no doubt about this. So the need to communicate through sounds and images is definitely part of my essence but that doesn’t mean I seek consensus at all costs. My works have the ambition to act on several levels of reading and from a certain point of view they are not immediately readable, I am aware of this. But I like to inspire people to dig deeper than normal perception if possible (see how ambition comes back?), and I like to believe that someone out there can discover something about me through this extraordinary medium that is cinema .

-What prompted you to become a director?

I really can’t define myself as such. I have never studied directing or attended courses, even if only at an amateur level. I put together sounds, words and images trying to give everything a complete meaning. Just as I have always made music without ever having studied it at an academic level, I communicate sensations and if possible I try to make people think about issues that I consider important always having as a background women and all their problems. I consider this a pleasure and a duty towards a world that from a male point of view I often don’t understand and sometimes it scares me.

-Do you think cinema can bring about a change in society?

I think he’s already done it and not always in a positive way. Try asking someone young, and not only, what his favorite film is and you’ll get the answer. Also try asking who Tarkovsky is and you will get the answer, different but exhaustive. Of course we also need the first Fantozzi … but …….

-What would you change in the world?

Nothing. Everyone changes from if they want. No one ever changes because someone tells you to, and if that happens it means that something is wrong. Thought has thus flattened and discernment agonizes among the news bulletins of the various news programs or newspapers. It’s easier to rely on pre-packaged concepts than to go deep and opt for a totally personal point of view (I don’t mean right or wrong but free from conventional schemes). If this makes me an elitist snob, I take responsibility for it, but the lack of openness towards alternative concepts and visions is, I believe, the daughter of this society. And I say that not with anger but with absolute bitterness and concern.

-Where do you see the film industry going in the next 100 years?

There are independent directors and films of the highest level around the world but we need to understand what cinema really is and what it wants to bring into the future. In my opinion, if a film wants to transpose a novel from the last century or even older into images and dialogues, it doesn’t make much sense. In my opinion cinema should act first of all through images, then through sounds and only finally through dialogues. I think the mainstream is going in the opposite direction.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYpj-bO8HvmYXEajton9Xpw

-Who is Sandra Mladjanovic?

It’s very difficult for me to explain myself in front of a large audience. I perceive myself as very complex, and I would try to approach the audience chronologically, maybe that’s the only way I can express myself. Essentially, I am a visual artist who lives and works in a very small town in Bosnia and Herzegovina called Doboj. There is Sandra before the age of seven and after the age of seven. I would divide that time into before and after the war in Yugoslavia and the dissolution of Yugoslavia. I don’t have formal education in the film industry, I’m just a lifelong fan of film and music. The COVID period brought me the most magical experience, which was diving in Egypt with a complete sense of the sea and the force of the sea. I secretly studied philosophy, but I didn’t complete it formally. I love stories that don’t have an ending and live on their own in time.

-What inspired you to become a filmmaker?

The COVID period has been the most traumatic experience for me after the civil war in Bosnia, which lasted for four years. My inner anxiety was awakened again, wondering how long this situation had to last and why. I even think that unconsciously, I escaped under the sea to avoid the disaster that had taken over the planet, even wider than the war in Bosnia. For many years, I expressed myself through photography, digital images, and other media, but they couldn’t embody the idea that had sound, image, and a more layered story. I looked for short forms, and the film I present to the audience is dedicated to a friend from Britain who is no longer with us in the physical world. He did not survive a lung transplant. It’s always a struggle for truth, which philosophically speaking, has no happy ending, and somewhere in that experimental practice, I give myself an answer and serve as a mirror of the existing reality. One accidental event was crucial for me to even dip my toes into the world of film. I submitted my first underwater film to the Underwater Film Festival in Neum, Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2021, and won the first prize for the best domestic film. That was a trigger for further thinking about film creation.

-Do you think the cinema can bring a change in the society?

I am not from the world of directors, screenwriters, and other film professionals, but a great influence in my life until the age of seven was the director Emir Kusturica with the film “Time of the Gypsies” and the story of people on the margins. I realized then that life is an uncomfortable story that must be lived no matter what happens to you. I knew early on that there is no free will in man, which may have been more influential for my upbringing. One thing is certain, that film in relation to the time in which it is lived and created leaves an indelible mark on the spirit that can live and exist in those who deal with the spirit, truth, situation… Also, Kusturica is not the only director I would mention, he is just from my country. I respect the work of Lars Von Trier, Tarkovsky, Bertolucci, Fellini, Pasolini, Paradjanov, and other great names from the world of cinema. I remember visiting Sicily in 2016 and the village of Savoca, where the famous Vitteli bar from “The Godfather” movie is located, directed by Francis Ford Coppola. I love to find a famous film location and relive a piece of it.

-What would you change in the world?

I don’t know how much I’m able to change anything, because so many times in my life I was unable to influence anything in an objective way. Change would be a great idea of control, and I am afraid of conditions that aim for control. My great life pain is that we are all one, and that’s my Achilles heel that I regularly succumb to.

-Where do you see the film industry going in the next 100 years?

I believe that the film industry won’t go far for me. I will preserve the values that I consider important, so an object or idea that doesn’t interest me won’t be too significant. The world is changing, and virtual realities, changes in film technology, entertainment, and commercial content follow it, but I know they won’t be significant for me. I will look for personal material that interests me in life, and everything else can go by me.

On Friday, June 16, Giuseppe Verdi’s “Aida” premiere was held at the Arena di Verona, the city that theater lovers remember for the tragedy “Romeo and Juliet”, the immortal masterpiece by William Shakespeare.

The show opened the season that celebrates the 100th anniversary of the most prestigious opera festival in the world.

Among the audience were the Oscar-winning Sofia Loren, also the godmother of the evening, and Matt Dillon, the main character of “Rumble Fish” directed by Francis Ford Coppola, to which WILD FILMMAKER, in collaboration with Christopher Coppola, will dedicate a Webinar.

Anna Laura Miszerak, the production assistant of WILD FILMMAKER, has dedicated herself to dance and opera and performed at the premiere of the Arena of Verona, which compared to sports, is like for a basketball player to play in the NBA.

Orson Welles commenting on Federico Fellini’s cinema, simply said, “It dances!”.

In two words, the great Orson had grasped the deep meaning of Fellini’s art. Cinema can be a dance and the steps are made of editing.

Therefore, we are proud to have an artist like Anna Laura Miszerak in the WILD FILMMAKER Team, who has created a perfect symbiosis between dance, opera and our innovative way of storytelling and making cinema.All this confirms the philosophy adopted by WILD FILMMAKER, namely that to change the present, it is necessary to know the past sincerely.